Al-Qaeda denies death of its No. 2 in Yemen, again

Apr. 10, 2013
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This is an undated frame grab from video posted on a militant-leaning website, and provided by the SITE Intelligence Group, showing Saeed al-Shihri, deputy leader of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. / AP

by Iona Craig, Special for USA TODAY

by Iona Craig, Special for USA TODAY

SANAA, Yemen - Al-Qaeda in Yemen's second-in-command appears, once again, to have come back from the dead.

Saeed al-Shihri has been pronounced killed three times by the Yemeni government, but an audio message purportedly from Shihri has been posted online by al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula's official media wing.

The authenticity of the recording could not be verified. However, the reported voice of Shihri refers to events that have taken place since his alleged death in November in what Yemen's national security agency described as a "counterterrorism operation" in Sadaa province.

In the 14-minute recording, Shihri denounces a February anti-terrorism conference in Saudi Arabia and refers to a meeting of Arab ministers in March. His main focus was to denounce Saudi Arabia's ruling family as "U.S. collaborators" and called for the removal of the Saudi regime "by all means."

Yemen's Supreme National Security Committee claimed in January that the terrorist was killed in November, at least the third time the former Guantanamo Bay detainee had been reported killed.

Shihri was captured in Afghanistan in 2001, sent to the U.S. detention facility for terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and put on a list of 37 most dangerous inmates. He was sent back to Saudi Arabia in 2007 to take part in a rehabilitation program. Shortly after being released by Saudi officials in 2008, Shihri arrived in Yemen and in January 2009 appeared in a video message announcing the creation of al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula.

The Yemeni government announced that Shihri had been killed in 2009 and then erroneously reported his capture in 2010 before once again reporting his death in a U.S. drone strike in September 2012.

The United States has been heavily involved in the fight against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, regarded by Washington as the most dangerous branch of al-Qaeda in the world. The number of U.S. drone strikes carried out in Yemen surpassed those in Pakistan for the first time last year, according to monitoring groups.